The global proliferation of mobile wireless telephone handset usage has given rise to increased environmental noise levels, resulting from audible alert tones and conversational chatter, which is often distracting and increasingly unwelcome in many places, for example, in libraries, educational classrooms, places of worship, offices, television studios, theaters and concert halls, court rooms and other government buildings, etc.
Cellular telephone use is banned or restricted in many environments, including restaurants, government buildings, commercial aircraft, hospitals and other areas, due either to environmental noise or potential radio frequency interference concerns. Compliance with these restrictions however is generally voluntary. The user must manually disable the phone or reduce the audio alert volume or configure the phone to vibrate instead of ring, usually through a user setup menu or by selecting a particular user profile.
The Canadian Government recently issued a “Radiocommunications Act”, Notice No. DGTP-002-02, inviting industry and public comment on a proposal to broaden the licensing of radiotelephone jamming devices for niche-market and location-specific purposes, beyond public safety and law enforcement applications.
Several radio jamming technologies are known, including the use of intelligent beacons that disable cellular telephone ring features by transmitting a control signal, for example from a Bluetooth transmitter to a Bluetooth enabled microchip on the cellular telephone.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,351,639 entitled “Telephone Whose Setting Details Can Be Changed, And Telephone Capable of Changing Settings Of Called Telephone” discloses remotely controlling cellular telephone settings, for example ring volume and alert mode, from another cellular telephone or from a landline phone. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,351,639, the user of the telephone having its setting changed, however, has the ability to limit or reject new settings from remote telephones.
The various aspects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more fully apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon careful consideration of the following Detailed Description of the Invention with the accompanying drawings described below.